“THE ARMY REGULATION DOESN’T STATE THAT BEING RIGHT-HANDED OR LEFT-HANDED MATTERS—BUT YOU’RE RIGHT-HANDED, AREN’T YOU?” he asked me.
“Yes,” I said.
“THEN I THINK IT OUGHT TO BE THE RIGHT INDEX FINGER—JUST TO BE SAFE,” he said. “I MEAN, OFFICIALLY, WE’RE TALKING ABOUT YOUR TRIGGER FINGER.”
I froze. He walked to the table under the diamond wheel and demonstrated how I should put my hand on the block of wood—but he didn’t touch the wood; if he’d touched it, that would have spoiled his opinion that it was sterile. He made a fist, pinning his other fingers under his thumb, and he spread his index finger flat on its side. “LIKE THIS,” he said. “IT’S THE KNUCKLE OF YOUR MIDDLE FINGER YOU’VE GOT TO KEEP OUT OF MY WAY.” I couldn’t speak, or move, and Owen Meany looked at me. “BETTER HAVE ANOTHER BEER,” he said. “YOU CAN BE A READER WITH ALL YOUR OTHER FINGERS—YOU CAN TURN THE PAGES WITH ANY OLD FINGER,” he said. He could see I didn’t have the nerve for it.
“IT’S LIKE ANYTHING ELSE—IT’S LIKE LOOKING FOR YOUR FATHER. IT TAKES GUTS. AND FAITH,” he added. “FAITH WOULD HELP. BUT, IN YOUR CASE, YOU SHOULD CONCENTRATE ON THE GUTS. YOU KNOW, I’VE BEEN THINKING ABOUT YOUR FATHER—YOU REMEMBER THE SO-CALLED LUST CONNECTION? WHOEVER HE WAS, YOUR FATHER MUST HAVE HAD THAT PROBLEM—IT’S SOMETHING YOU DON’T LIKE IN YOURSELF. WELL, WHOEVER HE WAS—I’M TELLING YOU—HE WAS PROBABLY AFRAID. THAT’S SOMETHING YOU DON’T LIKE IN YOURSELF, TOO. WHOEVER YOUR MOTHER WAS, I’LL BET SHE WAS NEVER AFRAID,” said Owen Meany. I not only couldn’t speak, or move; I couldn’t swallow. “IF YOU’RE NOT GOING TO HAVE ANOTHER BEER,” he said, “AT LEAST TRY TO FINISH THAT ONE!”
I finished it. He pointed to the sink.
“BETTER WASH YOUR HAND—SCRUB IT GOOD,” he said. “AND THEN RUB ON THE ALCOHOL.”
I did as I was told.
“YOU’RE GOING TO BE FINE,” he said. “I’LL HAVE YOU AT THE HOSPITAL IN FIVE MINUTES—UNDER TEN MINUTES, TOPS! WHAT’S YOUR BLOOD TYPE?” he asked me; I shook my head—I didn’t know my blood type. Owen laughed. “I KNOW WHAT IT IS—YOU DON’T REMEMBER ANYTHING! YOU’RE THE SAME TYPE AS ME! IF YOU NEED ANY, YOU CAN HAVE SOME OF MINE.” I couldn’t move away from the sink.
“I WASN’T GOING TO TELL YOU THIS—I DIDN’T WANT TO WORRY YOU—BUT YOU’RE IN THE DREAM. I DON’T UNDERSTAND HOW YOU COULD BE IN IT, BUT YOU ARE—EVERY TIME, YOU’RE IN IT,” he said.
“In your dream?” I asked him.
“I KNOW YOU THINK IT’S ‘JUST A DREAM’—I KNOW, I KNOW—BUT IT BOTHERS ME THAT YOU’RE IN IT. I FIGURE,” said Owen Meany, “THAT IF YOU DON’T GO TO VIETNAM, YOU CAN’T BE IN THAT DREAM.”
“You’re absolutely crazy, Owen,” I told him; he shrugged—then he smiled at me.
“IT’S YOUR DECISION,” he told me.
I got myself from the sink to the saw table; the diamond wheel was so bright, I couldn’t look at it. I put my finger on the block of wood. Owen started the saw.
“DON’T LOOK AT THE BLADE, AND DON’T LOOK AT YOUR FINGER,” he told me. “LOOK RIGHT AT ME.” I shut my eyes when he put the safety goggles in place. “DON’T SHUT YOUR EYES—THAT MIGHT MAKE YOU DIZZY,” he said. “KEEP LOOKING AT ME. THE ONLY THING YOU SHOULD BE AFRAID OF IS MOVING—JUST DON’T MOVE,” he said. “BY THE TIME YOU FEEL ANYTHING, IT WILL BE OVER.”
“I can’t do it,” I said.
“DON’T BE AFRAID,” Owen told me. “YOU CAN DO ANYTHING YOU WANT TO DO—IF YOU BELIEVE YOU CAN DO IT.”
The lenses of the safety goggles were very clean; his eyes were very clear.
“I LOVE YOU,” Owen told me. “NOTHING BAD IS GOING TO HAPPEN TO YOU—TRUST ME,” he said. As he lowered the diamond wheel in the gantry, I tried to put the sound of it out of my mind. Before I felt anything, I saw the blood spatter the lenses of the safety goggles, through which his eyes never blinked—he was such an expert with that thing. “JUST THINK OF THIS AS MY LITTLE GIFT TO YOU,” said Owen Meany.
9
The Shot
* * *
Whenever I hear someone generalizing favorably about “the sixties,” I feel like Hester, I feel like throwing up. I remember those ardent simpletons who said—and this was after the massacre of those 2,800 civilians in Hué, in ’68—that the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese were our moral superiors. I remember a contemporary of mine asking me—with a killing lack of humor—if I didn’t sometimes think that our whole generation took itself too seriously; and didn’t I sometimes wonder if it was only the marijuana that made us more aware?
“MORE AWARE OF WHAT?” Owen Meany would have asked.
I remember the aggressiveness of the so-called flower children—yes, righteousness in the cause of peace, or in any other cause, is aggressive. And the mystical muddiness of so much of the thinking—I remember that, too; and talking to plants. And, with the exception of Owen Meany and the Beatles, I remember that there was precious little irony.
That’s why Hester failed as a singer and as a songwriter—a deadly absence of irony. Perhaps this is also why she’s so successful now: with the direction her music traveled, from folk to rock, and with the visual aid of those appalling rock videos—those lazy-minded, sleazy associations of “images” that pass for narrative on all the rock-video television channels around the world—irony is no longer necessary. Only the name that Hester took for herself reflects the irony with which she was once so familiar—in her relationship with Owen Meany. As a folksinger, she was Hester Eastman—an earnest nobody, a flop. But as an aging hard-rock star, a fading queen of the grittiest and randiest sort of rock ’n’ roll, she is Hester the Molester!
“Who would have believed it?” Simon says. “‘Hester the Molester’ is a fucking household word. The bitch should pay me a commission—it was my name for her!”
That I am the first cousin of Hester the Molester distinguishes me among my Bishop Strachan students, who are otherwise inclined to view me as fussy and curmudgeonly—a cranky, short-haired type in his corduroys and tweeds, eccentric only in his political tempers and in his nasty habit of tamping the bowl of his pipe with the stump of his amputated index finger. And why not? My finger is a perfect fit; we handicapped people must learn to make the best of our mutilations and disfigurements.
When Hester has a concert in Toronto, my students who number themselves among her adoring fans always approach me for tickets; they know I’m good for a dozen or so. And that I attend Hester’s occasional concerts here in the company of such attractive young girls allows me to infiltrate the crow